What are some other wacky military ideas that never made it?

[Corporate Hippie]

In a military history course a few months ago, my professor enlightened the class about Bat Bombs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb) (more details (http://www.afa.org/magazine/1990/1090bat.html)). The idea struck me as hilarious, so I was wondering if any military buffs out there know of any other wacky, strange, or unorthodox military ideas that were rejected or are just not widely known about?

[Xema]

There's always the pigeon-guided missle (http://historywired.si.edu/object.cfm?ID=353).

[engineer_comp_geek]

Anti-tank dogs:
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_dog

Military psychics?
http://www-tech.mit.edu/Issue/V115/N60/senators.60w.html

Do japanese fugu bombs count?

[Quint]

I submit Operation Habbakuk (http://www.combinedops.com/Pykrete.htm). A WWII plan to make aircraft carriers out of ice and woodchips. The idea is perhaps not as silly as animal guided weapons, but the name is so outstanding.

[PinkNailFile]

[2050 American]
That whole homosexual policy. Who cares what people do in bed? We just want them to invade, loot, pillage, burn, and rape.
[/2050 American]

[Larry Mudd]

Several are mentioned in this recent article (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4174519.stm).The plan for a so-called "love bomb" envisaged an aphrodisiac chemical that would provoke widespread homosexual behaviour among troops, causing what the military called a "distasteful but completely non-lethal" blow to morale.Also noteworthy is the idea of a chemical weapon that could be deployed in order to give enemy combatants really bad breath.

[What Exit?]

How about a real weapon that was really silly

Japanese Balloon Bombs (http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/history/wwii/jbb.htm)

[Rodd Hill]

Well, I'll pick up the mulberry-paper glove on behalf of the Fu-go; it may seem pretty desperate in retrospect, and it certainly was never going to be a war-winner. But it did drain war resources (although not to produce any kind of effective "return.")

I have part of one of these on display at Fort Rodd Hill (the "chandelier" and plug ring--the balloon and all explosive bits are long gone).

The only documented damage done was the poor pregnant woman and five children were killed on Gearhart Mountain, Oregon, while on their way for a picnic in May, 1945. http://www.transistor.org/personal/photos/klamath2001/mitchellmonument.jpg

Well, that and knocking out power to the Manhattan Project for a couple of days:

On the afternoon of March 10th, a soggy Fu-Go sank from a rainy Washington sky and floated into the high-tension power lines leading from the Bonneville Dam. The lines shorted and protective gear shut them down. Power was lost to a portion of the state. Inside the blacked-out region was the Manhattan Project's supersecret Hanford Works, where the new "B" Reactor was generating plutonium for experiments at Los Alamos, the headquarters of America's top secret nuclear bomb project. Deprived of its electric cooling pumps, "B" Reactor shut down. It was three days before full production could be resumed.

From this page: http://www.project1947.com/gfb/fugo.htm

Oppenheimer even spotted one over the Trinity Test site.

The balloons did create a great deal of flurry in the military in the US and Canada; several fighter squadrons were kept on standby to shoot the things down (over the ocean, when possible), troops were sent out to find and disarm the things.

There was genuine worry about the payload being changed from "harmless" incendiary pellets to something more sinister--say, anthrax or nerve gas, or even good old mustard gas. Imagine one of those coming down in Vancouver, or Seattle, or Los Angeles. Not quite so Heath Robinson (or Rube Goldberg, I should say).

Fu-go and Canada: http://www.members.shaw.ca/dmcclarty/schmidt_history/japfirecwm.htm

If the Fu-go campaign had taken place more in the dry summer months, the damage done and manpower cost of large fires could have been much more (just think of the big fires here in BC two years ago, or some of the California blazes).

Still, not a war-winner, but there was no other way to reach out and touch the North American homeland. Full marks for ingenuity and resourcefulness. Minus ten for bad timing.

[F. U. Shakespeare]

Pykrete/Habbakuk wasn't really crazy -- the proposed technology was simply rendered obsolete by nuclear weapons, which would have turned the huge ice/sawdust ships into floating radioactive masses. (The end of the war also stepped down efforts on Operation Habbakuk).

I seem to remember hearing that Habbakuk was the beginning of the discipline of materials science (IANAMS).

I submit Operation Habbakuk (http://www.combinedops.com/Pykrete.htm). A WWII plan to make aircraft carriers out of ice and woodchips. The idea is perhaps not as silly as animal guided weapons, but the name is so outstanding.

[Lumpy]

There was the Bv-141 Asymmetrical airplane (http://www.aircraftresourcecenter.com/Rev1/401-500/Rev459_BV-141B_Swan/rev459.htm), one of many strange experimental designs the Germans came up with during WW2. Apparently it actually flew just fine, but people couldn't get past how weird it looked.

[Tapioca Dextrin]

How about a real weapon that was really silly

Japanese Balloon Bombs (http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/history/wwii/jbb.htm)

I'll see your balloon bomb and raise you a nuclear hand grenade (http://www.guntruck.com/DavyCrockett.html).

[Schnitte]

I'm not an expert on military history or technology, and that's a field I'm not particulalry interested in. But my guess would be that the Japanese balloon bombs are not all that silly an idea. Jrfranchi's link says:

On May 5, 1945, six picnickers were killed in Oregon when a balloon bomb they dragged from the woods exploded. The U.S. Government quickly publicized the balloon bombs, warning people not to tamper with them. These were the only known fatalities occurring within the U.S. during WWII as a direct result of enemy action.

That's not what you'd call "efficient" when you consider that (as the link also says) 9,000 of those things were built. But consider this:

Actual damage caused by the balloon bombs was minor. However, the incendiaries which they carried did pose a serious threat to the forests of the northwestern U.S. during the dry months. These balloons also offered a vehicle for germ warfare had the Japanese decided to use this weapon.

Besides, when you take into account that the costs of producing those balloons were certainly much lower than of some of the high-tech weapons deployed in WWII and other conflicts, and that a series of reported incidents could have done damage to the national morale among American civilians, I suppose the idea itself wasn't bad.

[CalMeacham]

Back in the 1960s there was a series of books on WWII history. One was entitled German Secret Weapkns and another Allied Secret Weapons. There were a lot of dumb ideas that didn't work. There was a sort of giant flametrhrower that was supposed to dissuade german planes from flying over Britain. This would have as much effect as a candle flame does on your finger when you swipe your finger through it. I think they decided that it could be a potent psychological weapon. Hah.


There were proposed devices to make breaches in the supposed Atlantic Wall. Fortunately, there was no wall, so they never needed the devices which, by and large, wouldn';t have worked.

[What Exit?]

Not a weapon per se but how about a giant transport Plane.

Howard Hughes' Hercules. AKA Spruce Goose.

[What Exit?]

That is a giant transport Plane made out of Plywood. I Hit submit instead of Preview. :o

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spruce_Goose

[HPL]

Some of the German tanks, if not silly, were a bit over the top.

The Maus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_VIII_Maus) and Ratte (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-1000).

Though it does remind me of the Mammoth tank from the C&C games.

[Hyperelastic]

Not quite military, yet intriguing: the Magdeburg (http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/mageburg.htm) rocket, which was designed to go from Germany to New Zealand by going straight up. Straight up, you ask? Yes - the builder of the Magdeburg rocket subscribed to the theories of one Peter Bender, who claimed that the Earth's surface was actually the interior surface of an enormous hollow ball, with the stars and planets occupying the interior of the hollow ball. This placed New Zealand directly opposite Germany on a diameter of the ball.

The project was funded by the city of Magdeburg, Germany through local Nazi contacts. The Nazi political leadership put a stop to this research, but only because they wanted all private rocket research stopped, not particularly because the Magdeburg rocket was nuttier than a fruitcake.

[cabdude]

I just finished reading The Wrong Stuff (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/188380910X/104-3870415-3574340?%5Fencoding=UTF8), part of which talks about the experiments in the 50's to replace aircraft carrier decks with rubber decks instead.

[DocCathode]

Re Pyke

He's got an entry in Strange Lives And Eccentric Notions. I haven't read all of the linked page yet (It may have been the page that infected my computer. Though it was probably just a coincidence of timing), but I thought Pyke was actually a very inteligent and resourceful scientist. His problems following general rules and procedures. His refusal to shave, comb his hair, and wear a suit convinced most potential patrons that Pyke was crazy, an idiot or both.

Re BV-141

According to The World's Worst Aircraft, its performance was excellent. The designer knew it would be, but nobody believed him.

Re The Spruce Goose

There was nothing wrong or wacky with using the Duramold process to build planes. AFAIK, there was nothing wrong with the design of the Spruce Goose. The real problem was that Hughes had begun to lose his mind. Instead of drawing up specifications for the finished wood and having workers perform tests to see what kind of wood was the most suitable, or performing those tests himself, Hughes became obssessive compulsive. When he did decide on a species of tree, he became obssessie compulsive over exactly which individual specimens of that tree were suitable.

The Spruce Goose's only flight happened during a taxiing run. It took off at a lower speed then expected, and without any effort at all. I don't see how it was a failure. As for the idea of huge military transport planes, look at the Guppy.

[Guinastasia]

Would Reagan's "Star Wars" count, and the idea of a "peace shield" over the US?

[smiling bandit]

Would Reagan's "Star Wars" count, and the idea of a "peace shield" over the US?

In theory there's nothing wrong with the idea. There's also been a lot of work in the field (which may actually pay off in spades in other appications). It may not as practical as other missile defense systems, though. There's some work being done with laser response systems which may prove much more feasible.

[What Exit?]

The OP Title was: What are some other wacky military ideas that never made it?

Does someone have to defend every wacky idea that never made it?

Spruce goose was feasible but still wacky and never made it.
Star Wars was feasible but the Tech wasn't available and the public name instantly put in into the wacky category and it never made it.

If we wanted strickly wacky the Bradley Fighting Vehicle would qualify but it did make it. ;)

[Bryan Ekers]

The arsenal ship (http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/arsenal_ship.htm) proposal called for a lightly-crewed, low-radar-signature missile platform that could creep up to an enemy's shore, launch up to 500 missiles at them and creep away.

In a similar vein, the guys at Metalstorm.com have some really cool videos of ridiculous firepower in action. The UCAV video (http://metalstorm.com/04_video_ucav.html), describing a combat drone with a payload of 14400 40mm grenades, is especially amusing.

[DrDeth]

One that was actually tried was the B-17 'escort bomber" which was a regaulr B17 with lots of extra guns and armour instead of bombs. It had the problem in that it was still heavy after the other B17s had dropped their bombs (the B17 was rather fast when not loaded down), and that regular fighters with drop tanks started appearing anyway.

The "spruce goose" wasn't wacky at all. The idea was to make a transport airplane in case the Nazis won 'the battle of the Atlantic" with their U-boats. They didn't, so the airplane wasn't needed. The germans had a Gotha converted from a glider that was super huge- no one calls that "wacky" (although it looks wacky, I'll admit).

Many ideas- especially those on the Allies side- which appear 'wacky" and were dropped were only dropped because there was no longer a need for them.

The USA designed a heavy tank- which was going to be too difficult to transport, but wasn't needed anyway (you don't need to go "toe-to toe' with a Tiger in your tank if you can have airplanes & heavy artillery take it out instead).

The "cruiser sub" with a heavy gun armament was definately one wacky idea that failed. They worked - sorta- in WWI, but were a complete failure in WWII- mainly because of airplanes. The USA built 2 of them, and the French had the ultimate- the Surcouf with an 8" gun!

The Jap/IJN "midget sub" and "sub-borne aircraft" ideas both failed.

I always liked the idea of the "parasite fighter"- carried by larger bombers- the Akron & Macon had their own aircraft for example.

[cornflakes]

How about wacky tactics? In the battle for Seelow Heights, the Russians pointed searchlights on a nighttime battlefield to blind and disorient the enemy. It didn't work: the seachlights blinded the Soviet troops instead, and the silhouettes made things easy for the Germans.

[Grossbottom]

I don't think the bats have been mentioned yet.


http://www.afa.org/magazine/1990/1090bat.asp



"Captain Carr reported tersely that "testing was concluded . . . when a fire destroyed a large portion of the test material." He did not mention that, in one test, a village simulating Japanese structures burned to the ground. Nor did he state that a careless handler had left a door open and some bats escaped with live incendiaries aboard and set fire to a hangar and a general's car. Records do not reflect the general's reaction, but he could not have been pleased."



It may not be number one, but I'd definitely vote it into the top five most bizarre efforts in the history of warfare.

[CalMeacham]

Grossbottom, please check the OP.


Aftyer that, you might want to check out that thread about describing a superhero based on your username. It'd be a winner.

[detop]

The "spruce goose" wasn't wacky at all. The idea was to make a transport airplane in case the Nazis won 'the battle of the Atlantic" with their U-boats. They didn't, so the airplane wasn't needed. The germans had a Gotha converted from a glider that was super huge- no one calls that "wacky" (although it looks wacky, I'll admit).
<nitpick> the German plane wasn't a Gotha design, it was a Messerchmitt (http://perso.wanadoo.fr/frenchaces/avions/luftwaffe/img/me323_ph.jpg) design, more correctly, the Me-323.</nitpick>.

The Jap/IJN "midget sub" and "sub-borne aircraft" ideas both failed.
The Japanese weren't the only ones dealing with midget subs. The Germans, Italians, and British all had midget subs during WWII.

I always liked the idea of the "parasite fighter"- carried by larger bombers- the Akron & Macon had their own aircraft for example.
Which were dirigibles. The idea resurfaced after WWII with the Goblin fighter (http://bf1942.rebel-scum.com/SW016_th.jpg) for the B-36.

cornflakes, the Soviet tactic wasn't a bad one, it was a badly executed version of the British one of "artificial moonlight".

[CalMeacham]

Quote:
The Jap/IJN "midget sub" and "sub-borne aircraft" ideas both failed.


The Japanese weren't the only ones dealing with midget subs. The Germans, Italians, and British all had midget subs during WWII.


And they weren't failures -- they worked quite well (although sometimes the users disdn't get to come home, like with the Japanese mini-subs). There;s an entire book in that series I mentioned on mini-subs.

[captnkurt]

Funny you should ask... I just started reading The Men Who Stare at Goats by Jon Ronson. From the review at Amazon:

a secret wing of the U.S. military called First Earth Battalion was created in 1979 with the purpose of creating "Warrior Monks," soldiers capable of walking through walls, becoming invisible, reading minds and even killing a goat simply by staring at it.

PS. Also, I heard that the Boomerang grenade never really got past the testing field...

captnkurt
Information Nation (http://informationnation.blogspot.com/)

[wevets]

Star Wars was feasible but the Tech wasn't available and the public name instantly put in into the wacky category and it never made it.


Feasibility depends on which aspect of Star Wars. The idea of Excalibur, the X-ray laser powered by a hydrogen bomb detonation, was pretty wacky. Teller probably only got to the stage of testing it by hiding behind the shield of top secret research, and when it was tested, claimed some lasing was detected, but later had to admit he may have been entirely wrong.

Since Star Wars got less grand in scope and only sought to intercept maybe one missile at a time, it got more feasible. Given the incredible expense to do even that, it seems like the idea of a "missile shield" over the entire continental U.S. sound wacky.

[gotpasswords]

There is an article in today's San Francisco Chronicle about nutty military projects and they allude as to how some of them are intentionally absurd - the hope is that our foes will see us working on something and they'll devote huge amounts of manpower and money to work on something that's nothing more than an elaborate distraction.

[Hyperelastic]

Would Reagan's "Star Wars" count, and the idea of a "peace shield" over the US?


They're still working on it in various forms. Also, depending on whose account you believe, it scared the piss out of the Russkies and hastened the end of the Soviet Union, so in that sense it "worked", even though it never worked.

[Earl Snake-Hips Tucker]

The "Brown Note" sound generator.

[Stranger On A Train]

They're still working on it in various forms. Also, depending on whose account you believe, it scared the piss out of the Russkies and hastened the end of the Soviet Union, so in that sense it "worked", even though it never worked.Possibly...certainly, the Soviets spent a lot of their GDP on missile defence, counterdefense, and detection systems, and given their much lower GDP per person than the US, they could scarcely afford to do so. (They also spent an enormous bundle on their Buran space shuttle development, far more than the US did on the NSTS, and with out a single operational launch to show for it.) On the other hand, a scared-pissless opponent with his thumb on the Big Red End-of-World Button is not exactly a stable strategic situation. Reagan no doubt scared them personally with his "Evil Empire" speech, and given that the last three Premiers prior to Gorbechev were all hardcore ideologues perpetually on death's door (Andropov in particular) they may have felt they didn't have much to lose if the US were in fact on the verge of deploying an effective ABM system. Fortunately, both bankruptcy and sanity ensued, but strategic missile defense development is an inherently destabilizing impulse from a strategic and political point of view.

Stranger

[CC]

What about the wacky idea that if you just kill an evil dictator, then all the people will welcome you as liberators? I heard of a country that actually tried that, but they had almost no spies and knew almost nothing about the country, so when they got there, they were considered the enemy by most of the people, and they never, ever, ever were able to leave.

[What Exit?]

What about the wacky idea that if you just kill an evil dictator, then all the people will welcome you as liberators? I heard of a country that actually tried that, but they had almost no spies and knew almost nothing about the country, so when they got there, they were considered the enemy by most of the people, and they never, ever, ever were able to leave.


Wow, that sounds eerily like Iraq. What a coincidence.

[fruitbat]

What about the wacky idea that if you just kill an evil dictator, then all the people will welcome you as liberators? I heard of a country that actually tried that, but they had almost no spies and knew almost nothing about the country, so when they got there, they were considered the enemy by most of the people, and they never, ever, ever were able to leave.

I have really come to appreciate how little people inject their politics into GQ. Glad to see you are onboard with the idea.

[Rodd Hill]

The "Brown Note" sound generator.

I think I used to work with one of those guys.

It was hell in there, I tell you.

[Tripler]

Anti-tank dogs:
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-tank_dog


From the article
These dogs were trained by the Soviet Union during World War II to be used against German armored vehicles. However, these dogs were trained on Russian tanks, which used diesel fuel. Because of this, the dogs instinctively ran toward the smell of diesel fuel from the Soviet tanks instead of the intended German targets.


Dude, talk about a mis-guided missile! :eek:

Tripler
Comrade, send out the dogs! . . . oh sh*t! :smack:

[HPL]

PS. Also, I heard that the Boomerang grenade never really got past the testing field...
]

Why would you want a grenade to come back to you after you throw it?

[bouv]

Why would you want a grenade to come back to you after you throw it?

So you can re-use it. Duh.

[Stranger On A Train]

Why would you want a grenade to come back to you after you throw it?So you can re-use it. Duh.Man, you must work for Alpha Complex R&D Weapons Division. [/Paranoia reference]

Strang-R-TRN-3

[Scruloose]

So you can re-use it. Duh.
:D

[Push You Down]

There was the Bv-141 Asymmetrical airplane (http://www.aircraftresourcecenter.com/Rev1/401-500/Rev459_BV-141B_Swan/rev459.htm), one of many strange experimental designs the Germans came up with during WW2. Apparently it actually flew just fine, but people couldn't get past how weird it looked.


I love plane! That's crazy. I want COBRA to have one.

[gotpasswords]

Boomerang grenades would be a classic mis-direction project. The enemy gets ahold of the idea, starts working on it and deploys the weapon to its troops who are soon clobbered by self-fire.

[commasense]

What about the Lepage Glue Gun? It glued a whole formation of planes together in mid-air.

[Ranchoth]

Some of the German tanks, if not silly, were a bit over the top.

The Maus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_VIII_Maus) and Ratte (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-1000).

Though it does remind me of the Mammoth tank from the C&C games.

I'll raise you a P1500 "Monster." (http://members.tripod.com/~fingolfen/superheavy/p1500.html)

And, for your pleasure, Luft 46 (http://www.luft46.com/) and Hikoki 1946. (http://j-aircraft.org/xplanes/)

Personally, I'm fond of Von Braun's A9/A10 (http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/a9a10.htm). That, and the Apollo LM Combat variant (http://www.astronautix.com/craft/apolmcsd.htm).

And...something I ran across the other day, the Colt "Defender" shotgun. (At the bottomof the page.) (http://guntech.com/hillberg/)

[xash]

What about the wacky idea that if you just kill an evil dictator, then all the people will welcome you as liberators? I heard of a country that actually tried that, but they had almost no spies and knew almost nothing about the country, so when they got there, they were considered the enemy by most of the people, and they never, ever, ever were able to leave.Politically charged statements are not permitted in GQ. Please do not repeat this.

Thank you.

-xash
General Questions Moderator

[DrDeth]

Personally, I'm fond of Von Braun's [url=http://www.[/url]. ]

Warning- pop ups there. :mad:

[Johnny L.A.]

Watching The History Channel today. (Hence, accuracy is suspect.) They claimed the Russians had plans for a flying submarine (or submersible airplane) in WWII. It was never built.

However, they did build one flying tank. Basically, wings and an empannage werre attached to a tank and it was towed aloft by a bomber. Upon reaching the landing zone it was to jettison the flying structure upon landing, after which it would be a regular tank. It was flown once.

[Ranchoth]

Warning- pop ups there. :mad:

Eh? Sorry bout that—none showed up on my machine.

[HPL]

I love plane! That's crazy. I want COBRA to have one.

They already did. It was called "Destros Dominator"

Okay, not quite the same thing, but really, really cool.

[Ranchoth]

At the risk of more popups, I'd also like to bring up Ithacus (http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/ithacus.htm). It's a troop transport.

A 1,200 man troop transport.

A 1,200 man, VTOVL SSTO intercontinental troop transport.

::pause::

::Low, sliding whistle::

All we need are some mechs, killbots and/or supersoldiers, and the party can REALLY begin. :cool:

[Malacandra]

The Panjandrum was a huge self-propelled demolition bomb - it had a pair of enormous wheels propelled by rim-mounted rockets firing tangentially. It featured in a Dad's Army episode and caused about as much havoc as it would if it had ever been deployed operationally.

Blohm und Voss came up with some other asymmetrical designs as well as the Bv141. I found this out only a few months ago. There are some pics on the web.

[CalMeacham]

The Panjandrum was a huge self-propelled demolition bomb - it had a pair of enormous wheels propelled by rim-mounted rockets firing tangentially. It featured in a Dad's Army episode and caused about as much havoc as it would if it had ever been deployed operationally.

Blohm und Voss came up with some other asymmetrical designs as well as the Bv141. I found this out only a few months ago. There are some pics on the web.


This is one of those contraptions I mentioned above that was supposed to demolish the Atlantic Wall. It wasn't the only one. I think they would've done as much damage to our side as theirs, if they'd actualy deployed it.

[Malacandra]

Yes. "Here's the new wonder device, which will roll unerringly to its destination as long as the ground is perfectly level, all the rockets fire with perfect synchronisation, and the device itself, which is roughly the size of a double-decker 'bus, is not damaged. Any questions?" :smack:

[Enola Straight]

There was the Bv-141 Asymmetrical airplane (http://www.aircraftresourcecenter.com/Rev1/401-500/Rev459_BV-141B_Swan/rev459.htm), one of many strange experimental designs the Germans came up with during WW2. Apparently it actually flew just fine, but people couldn't get past how weird it looked.

Deja Vu all over again...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaled_Composites_Boomerang

[newcrasher]

In a military history course a few months ago, my professor enlightened the class about Bat Bombs (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bat_bomb) (more details (http://www.afa.org/magazine/1990/1090bat.html)). The idea struck me as hilarious, so I was wondering if any military buffs out there know of any other wacky, strange, or unorthodox military ideas that were rejected or are just not widely known about?


....peace?......

[Malacandra]

We tried that in the Thirties, which is why we found ourselves in France in 1939 with a whole bundle of obsolete stuff and got our sorry behinds booted the following May.

[DocCathode]

However, they did build one flying tank. Basically, wings and an empannage werre attached to a tank and it was towed aloft by a bomber. Upon reaching the landing zone it was to jettison the flying structure upon landing, after which it would be a regular tank. It was flown once.

I think the German Gigant has already been mentioned. Like the BV 141, the Goblin, and a few others in this thread, it gets an entry in The World's Worst Aircraft.

The original idea was attaching big glider wings, and a tail to a tank. The tank could be towed to altitude, glide to the drop site, and jettison the glider parts. Aerodynamic problems led to more and more of the tank being covered by a glider frame. Soon, they had a huge glider, still cloth skin stretched over a metal frame, with a nose that split open to admit large cargo. It required too many tow planes. So the Gigant was fitted with its own engines. The whole idea might now have worked if they'd begun to think of the project as a plane. But, they were stuck on the idea of a glider. A huge glider with big engines had all kinds of problems. 201 Gigants were made, some with engines and some without. Besides everything else, they were extremely slow and unmaneuverable. Even with fighter escorts, they were easy targets.

[Malacandra]

Heh. Tow planes. They came up with the Heinkel 111Z to try to get this baby aloft. Two He111s siamesed together with a fifth engine on the wing centre section.

You may be starting to get a mental picture of that cartoon of a swing hanging from a tree, and the various modifications made to deal with one flaw after another...

[CalMeacham]

Heh. Tow planes. They came up with the Heinkel 111Z to try to get this baby aloft. Two He111s siamesed together with a fifth engine on the wing centre section.

You may be starting to get a mental picture of that cartoon of a swing hanging from a tree, and the various modifications made to deal with one flaw after another...


"Well, what if they carried it between them on a bit o' creeper?"

"Well, of course, African Heinkel 111Z's are non-migratory."

"Oh, yeah...."

[Johnny Ecks]

Lets see- guns with curved barrels for shooting around corners.
the gyrojet pistol: almost as effective as a .45, but much, much more expensive. And set fire to anything it hit would have been a bonus, but the gun was wildly inaccurate.
The jetpack- not a terrible idea, but thirty seconds of controlled flight is good for nothing.
The civil war idea of simultaniously firing two cannons loaded with cannonballs connected by a chain. The problem was the simultanious part.

[Ranchoth]

The jetpack- not a terrible idea, but thirty seconds of controlled flight is good for nothing.

About the jetpacks—most of the ones tested and in use today were actually rocket propelled. Bell was working on one with a true Jet engine which—and I think it made it to the prototype stage—actually had a seven minute endurance. Still not great, or militarily practical, but hey, cool enough.

[DocCathode]

the gyrojet pistol: almost as effective as a .45, but much, much more expensive. And set fire to anything it hit would have been a bonus, but the gun was wildly inaccurate.

You left out the interesting part. The Gyrojet didn't shoot bullets. It fired mini-rockets. The ammo conatinedd its own fuel, and increased in speed and damge as it flew.

[detop]

The original idea was attaching big glider wings, and a tail to a tank. The tank could be towed to altitude, glide to the drop site, and jettison the glider parts. Aerodynamic problems led to more and more of the tank being covered by a glider frame. Soon, they had a huge glider, still cloth skin stretched over a metal frame, with a nose that split open to admit large cargo. It required too many tow planes. So the Gigant was fitted with its own engines. The whole idea might now have worked if they'd begun to think of the project as a plane. But, they were stuck on the idea of a glider. A huge glider with big engines had all kinds of problems. 201 Gigants were made, some with engines and some without. Besides everything else, they were extremely slow and unmaneuverable. Even with fighter escorts, they were easy targets.

I think you got the Gigant and the flying tank confused. This (http://www.unrealaircraft.com/roadable/images/antonovkt.jpeg) is the flying tank and this (http://perso.wanadoo.fr/frenchaces/avions/luftwaffe/img/me323_ph.jpg) is the Gigant. The Gigant did start its life as a glider (Me 321) and had engines added later on, becoming the Me 323.

[HPL]

The civil war idea of simultaniously firing two cannons loaded with cannonballs connected by a chain. The problem was the simultanious part.

Sounds like Swordchucks.

[douglips]

My personal favorite wacky military project:
The Nuclear Ramjet cruise missile - Project Pluto (http://www.merkle.com/pluto/pluto.html)

Capable of cruising at supersonic speeds, and of staying airborne for weeks, they eventually hit upon the idea of simply driving it back and forth across the Soviet Union after it had delivered it's 12 warheads to their targets, spewing radioactive exhaust over the countryside.

[Lumpy]

My personal favorite wacky military project:
The Nuclear Ramjet cruise missile - Project Pluto (http://www.merkle.com/pluto/pluto.html)

Capable of cruising at supersonic speeds, and of staying airborne for weeks, they eventually hit upon the idea of simply driving it back and forth across the Soviet Union after it had delivered it's 12 warheads to their targets, spewing radioactive exhaust over the countryside.Mach 3. At treetop level. It could have killed people just by flying overhead.

[bizzwire]

Watching The History Channel today. (Hence, accuracy is suspect.) They claimed the Russians had plans for a flying submarine (or submersible airplane) in WWII. It was never built.

Didn't some of the German Subs actually carry an autogyro that could be deployed for scouting? I seem to remember seeing photographs once.

[bizzwire]

From here (http://www.pra007.org/histfaq.html)


Q: Did anyone else fly autogyros?

A: Before World War II, the German aircraft company Focke-Achgelis was licensed by Cierva and produced the C-19 Autogyro. From this design they developod thc first fully controlled helicopter, the FA-61, which flew in 1937. The German navy also used autogyro gliders, which were towed behind submarines on a long cable. The pilot, high above the sea, could spot ships and relay this information by telephone to the submarine below. Sometimes the autogyro pilot was forgotten in the press of battle. Imagine how it must have felt to see the cable attaching you to the submarine getting shorter and shorter as the submarine dived before retrieving you!

[Larry Mudd]

This just in: The German Chocolate Surprise, and other wacky ideas (http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article310341.ece):The weapons, such as the chocolate hand-grenade, designed to explode after the first row of chunks was broken off, were part of a campaign to undermine British resolve using sabotage and propaganda.

The bomb-makers were nothing if not ingenious. As well as packing explosives into cans of Smedley's English Grown Plums, the Nazis disguised plastic explosive as Wagon-Lits soap, hid detonators in torch batteries, and made exploding crucifixes, an incendiary Thermos flask and an exploding rat.

[Ficer67]

The Spruce Goose was a good idea, just that the war ended before it could prove itself. We still employ the same principle today, look at the C-5 Galaxy...

[Ranchoth]

The U.S. "Special Purpose Individual Weapon" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Purpose_Individual_Weapon) project to produce a Flechette-firing automatic rifle. Springfield's version (http://www.securityarms.com/20010315/galleryfiles/0400/444.htm) included an underbarrel automatic grenade launcher.

There was also the EX-41, an experimental pump-action version of the M-79 grenade launcher. All the sites about it online seem to be dead at the moment, though.

[HPL]

The Spruce Goose was a good idea, just that the war ended before it could prove itself. We still employ the same principle today, look at the C-5 Galaxy...

And personally, I would have been interested in seeing an alternate WW2 where the B-36 was used regulary in combat, instead of becoming a historical footnote like it did.

[kinoons]

[Monty Python] If we built this large wooden badger... [/Monty Python]

[matt]

Hadn't heard of the German Chocolate surprise! (Thanks for that one, Larry.) The British had a similar turn of mind with explosive lumps of coal, but my personal favourite was the land mine disguised as camel crap, for use in North Africa. (Saw it on a documentary about the Special Operations Executive (SOE), where a chap's top secret assignment was to obtain a representative sample of camel crap from London zoo.)

The really cunning version had the imprint of a tyre track already running through it...

http://www.maskelynemagic.com/9mi9soe.html

"I realised that if anyone is driving for hours in the desert it gets so bloody monotonous, if he sees a pile of dung ahead, he'll drive through it — just for something different. So I came to the conclusion that if we made dummy dung and put in a tyrebuster, a small charge with a metal pin in, we could blow the whole bloody wheel off a German vehicle."

In a separate reference, I came across another unusual character , Carleton Coon , an eccentric anthropologist, trained by the SOE and employed as an agent for the OSS. Coon was famous for his disappearing donkey act : "A compliant and unsuspecting donkey would be loaded with a timing device and a whopping seventy-five pounds of the new plastic explosive, "composition C'. A child would tether this trojan horse to the nearest tent full of German officers and then quietly slip away. At the preordained moment, donkey, tent, and the Wermacht's best and brightest would all disappear in a thunderous explosion and terrible flash of light. Or so it was hoped."

[Capt B. Phart]

The Panjandrum was a huge self-propelled demolition bomb - it had a pair of enormous wheels propelled by rim-mounted rockets firing tangentially.


It was invented by Aussie novelist Neville Shute -- there's a great bit of footage of it being tested on a beach. A dog starts chasing it, it gets out of control and starts chasing the dog! with rockets getting loose and flying around the sand passed the terrified mutt.

There was a series on British tv some time ago which dedicated an episode to the ideas that didn't make it -- the ones that I remember include a German attempt to use retro-rockets instead of parachutes (why I don't know), the test footage mostly showed the payload (a light truck IIRC) slamming into the ground at full speed, the retros would then fire and blast the wreckage skywards again.

(More recently "Credible Sport" (http://www.spectrumwd.com/c130/articles/Credible_Sport.htm) suggests that timing is still everything when having fun with rocketsThere was no trouble in hitting the ground, the hard part was firing the rockets at just the right altitude. No shit!)

Also featured was an American idea for making planes invisible by putting bright lights on the leading edge of the wings to eliminate the silhouette. Tests showed it actually worked (so long as the plane was coming straight at you, which an attacking plane would be)


From what I've heard the pigeon-guided missile had a fair chance of success - after all a pigeon represents a greater amount of image-processing and spatial awareness than even the best guidance systems today. The steering-mechanism/poultry interface may have been a bit clunky, but no worse than a lot of what saw service in WWII

In fact much of the stuff that was actually used on D-Day seemed pretty mad - except it (mostly) worked (though as the "Bangalore Torpedo" incident dramatised in Private Ryan showed, the poor sods who had to make them work weren’t always so appreciative of the inventive genius behind them)
Hobart's Funnies (http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/hobart.htm)
Mulberry and Pluto (http://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/England-History/MulberryandPluto.htm)

Radar was partly born out of research into using "death-rays" (just... don't!) to destroy aircraft rather than detect them

[DocCathode]

Also featured was an American idea for making planes invisible by putting bright lights on the leading edge of the wings to eliminate the silhouette. Tests showed it actually worked (so long as the plane was coming straight at you, which an attacking plane would be)

Yehudi camoflage. It works on tanks and camps too. Far enough way, the lights blend into the daytime sky and render the object invisible. It was declassified for decades. Then, the military reclassified it. They had decided that they could make stealth aircraft difficult enough to detect by radar that an enemy's first warning would be visual. Popular Science had an article on lights being mounted on the plane's underside as well. There is also research into translucent panels in the wings. These would make it more difficult to see an aircraft from beneath.

IMHO Yehudi camoflage does not belong in this thread. It may very well work. Some birds of prey have evolved natural Yehudi camoflage. Their wings are largely translucent in sunlight. At hunting altitude, this greatly reduces the shadow they cast on the ground, and makes them invisible to prey looking up.

[ElvisL1ves]

The Gigant did start its life as a glider (Me 321) and had engines added later on, becoming the Me 323.I think the giant glider qualifies for the thread, since the Germans didn't have a plane big enough to tow it. They did make a few test flights with multiple tow planes held separated by a framework, but that's an even worse idea.

IIRC every single Me323 was shot down trying to reach the Afrika Korps.

[Push You Down]

Since the nefarious organization Cobra has been mentioned (by me) I wanted to point out that the new action figure of Scrap Iron (the Cobra anti-armor specialist) comes with a gyrojet rifle.

[Mr. Moto]

The arsenal ship (http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/arsenal_ship.htm) proposal called for a lightly-crewed, low-radar-signature missile platform that could creep up to an enemy's shore, launch up to 500 missiles at them and creep away.

I have to tell you, this is a sound concept, and the Navy is putting it to sea, albeit in a very different form than this.

What they are doing is converting some Ohio class ballistic missile subs to carry more than 150 Tomahawks, so that they can creep up close to shore, launch them and then creep away.

Proven missile, proven platform. You'll see them at sea very soon.

[wevets]

IMHO Yehudi camoflage does not belong in this thread. It may very well work. Some birds of prey have evolved natural Yehudi camoflage. Their wings are largely translucent in sunlight. At hunting altitude, this greatly reduces the shadow they cast on the ground, and makes them invisible to prey looking up.

Many sea critters, such as a number of different species of squid, bioluminesce for this purpose.

[detop]

I think the giant glider qualifies for the thread, since the Germans didn't have a plane big enough to tow it. They did make a few test flights with multiple tow planes held separated by a framework, but that's an even worse idea.

IIRC every single Me323 was shot down trying to reach the Afrika Korps.

Thank you for your kind words (and you are right about the Gigants being shot down over the Med in 1943).

As an encore I present you with the Bachem Natter (http://www.fiddlersgreen.net/AC/aircraft/Bachem-Natter/info/info.htm)